Birth Story – Lily Luca

20.04.2017 | 3.43am | 8lb5oz – Lily Luca Bemrose

I kept going to start this blog post and simply don’t know where to start because it all happened so quickly. I wrote about Baxter’s and had trouble remembering all the details so figured I’d get onto Lily’s sooner rather than later.

For the days/nights leading up to the birth I was certain that she was ‘coming that night’. Nobody knows your body like you do and I knew stuff was going on but clearly she wasn’t quite ready.

I’ll set the scene…

The morning of the 20th rolls around, 2am – I am laying in bed and think ‘hmm, did I just wee?’ I get up and go to the toilet. It wasn’t enough for me to think much of it. I figured I was just loosing my mind. 5 min later, def not wees. I feel a warm surge of liquid – “REUBEN, get a towel! She’s coming” haha.

A friend of mine had kindly gifted me some adult nappies, what a god send. I put a pair of them sexy panties on and jumped back into bed. Reuben tells me “go back to sleep, reserve your energy” yeah, ok – thanks for that. This is what we did with Baxter but clearly Lily had other plans. Less than 5 minutes after laying in bed mildly freaking out that it was all finally happening contractions started and hit me like a freight train. 2 minutes apart from the get go and getting stronger and stronger each time. We called the midwife at 2.30am and told her what was going on, she said to come in and said she’d see us within the hour as we had to call on Reuben’s parents to come out as Bax was in bed fast asleep. Waiting for them felt like an eternity to the point that we were down in the garage with the car running. Contractions in the car are honestly hell. I thought to myself “why the fuck am I doing this to myself all over again?” and then I remembered we’d soon meet our little girl who’d complete our family and it’d all be worth it.

They finally arrived and we were on the road just after 3am. Shit was getting more intense as time went on and I kept saying to Reuben “this baby is coming, I feel like I need to push”.

We were traveling from Lower Hutt to Wellington Hospital where we’d chosen to give birth and we most definitely ran a few red lights when Reuben realized I wasn’t exaggerating and this baby was coming, and fast.

We arrived at the hospital carpark delivery suite lifts, they’re locked after hours and you have to use the phone of doom. We called up and said “yeah, we’re about to have a baby in the carpark” and we waited, and waited, and waited…. I was literally leaning against the parking machine, nappy and all, crossing my legs in an attempt to keep this baby in all while some teens were in the carpark getting wasted. Fun times. After what felt like 10 minutes, we called the midwife to tell her we were in the carpark and an orderly had still not come to let us up. She shortly greeted us in the lift and we were on our way up to delivery suite. It would have been about 3.30am by the time we got into the room which Reuben labeled the dojo.

I literally when into sheer panic within seconds as everything was happening so insanely fast. I yelled at my midwife saying I needed to push, I felt SO much pressure it was insane. She said the rest of my waters hadn’t gone and that was probably the pressure. Within seconds of her observation and examination, WHOOOSH – the rest of the waters go and I shit myself at the same time (I’d hoped I wouldn’t as I didn’t with Baxter but honestly don’t even give a shit now I think about it – see what I did there). Great idea on the chicken tandoori, Reuben. Lol.

I am not even exaggerating, within seconds I was pushing, 2 pushes and Lily Luca was born at 3.43am. 13 minutes after arriving into the delivery suite. If you were following our live updates on Snapchat you would have seen the gap in Reuben’s story, it literally happened THAT quickly. I am scared to think what had happened if she didn’t come down and get us from the carpark when she did or if I’d gone into labour at a different time of day and had traffic to compete with.

Lily was born happy and healthy (well, so we thought). In the days prior we learned that she’d potentially contracted some type of viral infection and her body was not strong enough to fight it off. She was having trouble with her breathing and was not maintaining a healthy body temp. We spent 4 days in the Wellington Children’s Hospital and I cannot express enough how amazing the staff were throughout our stay.

It was an extremely tough and emotional time for me since EVERY single family member on both sides got hit with Gastro. Dad, Mum (passed out at our place while caring for Baxter and got concussion), Baxter, Reuben’s Mum & Dad and then Reuben dramatically collapsed at the Children’s Hospital and spent the day in a private room there in isolation vomiting etc. It was fucking tough I tell you, due to everybody being sick and us not wanting Lily to be exposed to it I was doing this all on my own. It was difficult for Reuben and the rest of the families as they weren’t even able to see Lily. We communicated via text, FB chat and FaceTime. It was one of the loneliest and toughest few days I’ve experienced to date. It was so hard knowing Baxter was really sick and I couldn’t even see him and had to take everybody’s word that he was OK. I knew he wasn’t. I could feel my depression and anxiety coming flooding back and cried myself to sleep every single night. I put on a brave face/voice for Reuben most of the time but he knew it was killing me.

Everybody is OK now, Lily and I are back at home. Reuben and the rest of the family has recovered. Baxter seems to be 95% although I think some of his not being 100% is the getting adjusted to the fact there is another person in the house now. He is really good with Lily and comes in and says “halllooo lilllllly”. Cute af.

Reuben has been absolutely amazing despite all the drama. I can tell already that him and Lily are going to have the cutest bond ever.

So there you have it, the birth of Lily Luca Bemrose. Quite the exciting and dramatic story.

14 Comments

MeganMay 3, 2017 / 4:07 am

What a lovely story . my second boy was born on our bathroom floor i remeber thr pain like it was yedterday and also delivered by his daddy something we will never forget .at the time couldn’t find any battery’s for camera so it was crazy and all happend within in a hour .so damn fasted .

I feel your pain! The pressure from the baby coming but your waters still in tact. I had my girl on the front seat of the car in the a&e carpark and my waters didn’t break till her shoulders started coming out. Felt like I was exploding! 😂 (Not so funny at the time)

Aw thank you so much! It most certainly was intense. Sometimes I think insanely fast births can be as equally traumatic as drawn out ones. I am thankful it’s all in the past now and my wee family is complete. Thanks for reading x